Top 25 Twilight Language Theorists: 2017

The last sometimes comes first.

In 2012, the initial edition of this list was published on April 17th. It seems appropriate that on this fifth anniversary, a revised and updated list be published based on the last half-decade of activities of certain individuals and the forgotten achievements of others.

"Synchromysticism: The art of realizing meaningful coincidence in the seemingly mundane with mystical or esoteric significance." ~ Jake Kotze, The Brave New World Order, August 18, 2006.

The Living

Who are the top theorists doing "twilight language" research, contributions, or writings? Who has done this work in the neglected recent past? Here is my list. They are given alphabetically by their last names, so as not to show any preference or ranking.

(1) Joe Alexander, filmmaker Back to the Future Predicts 9/11 (released on YouTube on July 27, 2015, and viewed over 3 million times). Alexander was named the "Synchromystic Of The Year 2016."

(2) Rodney Ascher, filmmaker, director of 2012's Room 237, and 2015's Nightmare.

(3) Greg Bishop, author of 2000's Wake Up Down There! Excluded Middle Anthology, 2005's Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth, and other works. 

(4) Loren Coleman, author of 1987's Suicide Clusters, 2004's The Copycat Effect, and the writer of this Twilight Language blog. Name Game, Fayette Factor, and deeper meanings behind geographic and proper monikers go back to 1970s. (To exclude myself seemed beyond modesty.)

(5) Joan d'Arc, co-founder/co-publisher of Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader, editor of 1996's Paranoid Women Collect Their Thoughts, The Conspiracy Reader, and The New Conspiracy Reader.

(6) Alex Fulton, creator of Cryptokubrology on Twitter and mastermind (in association with Shawn Montgomery) behind various cryptokubrology contributions on YouTube and Facebook. See inspirational site here.

(7) Adam Gorightly, author of 2003's The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture, and 2008's James Shelby Downard's Mystical War. He hosts The Early Discordians on Facebook.

(8) Alan Green, the creator of Sync Quick News, the organizer of the Olympic Sync Summit, and the publisher of 2011's The Sync Book, 2012's The Sync Book 2, and the unpublished Suicide Kings. Alan Green was named the "Synchromystic Of The Year 2014."

(9) Andrew W. Griffin, creator of Red Dirt Report.

(10) Craig Heimbichner, author of 2005's Blood on the Altar, coauthor of 2012's Ritual America.

(11) Michael Anthony Hoffman II, author of 2001's Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare; and editor of various works by James Shelby Downard.

(12) Paul Kimball, author of 2012's The Other Side of Truth. Filmmaker, Stanton T. Friedman Is Real; Best Evidence; Denise Djokic: Seven Days Seven Nights, Synchronicity, and Fields of Fear; Eternal Kiss, and Damnation. 

(13) SMiles Lewis, creator of Anomaly Archives, Anomaly Radio, and Anomaly Television.

(14) Will Morgan, one of the original members of The Sync Whole group, a contributor to The Sync Books and the Olympic Sync Summit, and a co-host creator of 42 Minutes. "Synchromystic Of The Year 2015" was Will Morgan. 

(15) Adam Parfrey, publisher at Amok Press & Feral House; editor/author of numerous works, including 1988's The Manson File, 1990's Apocalypse Culture, 1995's Cult Rapture, 2000's Apocalypse Culture II; and coauthor of 2012's Ritual America.

(16) Theo Paijmans, co-author (with John Keel) of 1998's Free Energy Pioneer: John Worrell Keely and 2008's The VRIL Society. 

(17) Kenn Thomas, publisher/editor of Steamshovel Press; editor of Popular Alienation; coauthor of 1996's The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro and 1999's Inside the Gemstone File; author of 1996's NASA, Nazis & JFK, 1997's Mind Control, Oswald & JFK, 1999's Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy, and many other books.

(18) Robert Damon Schneck, author of 2005's The President's Vampire, 2014's Mrs. Wakeman vs the Antichrist: And Other Strange-but-True Tales from American History, and 2016's The Bye Bye Man.

(19) Jacques Vallee, author of Passport to Magonia, Invisible College, Messengers of Deception, as well as his trilogy, Dimensions, Confrontations, and Revelations - and other books.

(20) You. The unfound, unrevealed, the future writers in this field.



The Departed

Some significant theorists have passed away, so with a historical ranking by death date, here they are:

(21) James Shelby Downard (March 13, 1913 – March 16, 1998), author of 2006's The Carnivals of Life and Death, and essays, including “King-Kill/33: Masonic Symbolism in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy” and “Sorcery, Sex, Assassination."

(22) Jim Keith (September 21, 1949 – September 7, 1999), author of 1992's Gemstone File, 1993's Secret and Suppressed, 1994's Black Helicopters over America, 1995's Saucers of the Illuminati, 1996's The Octopus, 1996's Okbomb! Conspiracy and Coverup, and other works.

(23) Robert Anton Wilson (January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007), coauthor of 1975's The Illuminatus! Trilogy; author of 1973's The Sex Magicians, 1979-1981's Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, 1977-1995's Cosmic Trigger Trilogy, and other works.

 

(24) John A. Keel (March 25, 1930 – July 3, 2009), author of 1957's Jadoo, 1970's UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, 1971's Our Haunted Planet, 1975's The Mothman Prophecies, 1975's The Eighth Tower, and other works. Anomalist Books republished John Keel's books in recent years, and more information and links can be found here, here, and here.

(25) Mac Tonnies (August 20, 1975-October 22, 2009), author of 2004's After the Martian Apocalypse, and 2010's The Cryptoterrestrials, published after his sudden death at 34. Writer of the Posthuman Blues blog. Co-author with Paul Kimball of 2007's Doing Time. Kimball and Greg Bishop have been involved with the publishing of the collected writings of Tonnies. 

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Special note: Some may have escaped my in-depth attention (e.g. David Plate & his Jack of Hearts; Group name for Grapejuice), but I shall remedy such oversights in the next decade's editions. My sincere thanks to the anonymous and all those above who have freely exchanged intellectual ideas and data in this growing field. There are more works coming from those slipping into sychromysticism, who will be on future lists. 

Twin Peaks' Log Lady Dies

Actress Catherine Coulson, best known for playing the Log Lady (the character was named "Margaret Lanterman") on David Lynch's Twin Peaks, died of cancer, on Monday, September 28, 2015, in Ashland, Oregon, where she was born on October 22, 1943. She was 71.

Coulson was once interviewed about her Log Lady role, and described her Margaret Lanterman character as the “only normal person on the show,” but qualified that she’s “had some trauma and bonded with this Ponderosa pine,” according to Variety.

It has been reported that Catherine Coulson has already been shot for several episodes of the new series of Twin Peaks.

Coulson first collaborated with Lynch on a short film in 1974 [The Amputee], then again on the 1977 film Eraserhead. Over a decade later, she would work with Lynch again on Twin Peaks as the enigmatic Log Lady, a role she reprised in [the 1992 movie] Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me and for the new Showtime revival of the series [now due in 2017], though there is no word as to how involved she was, as filming just started.
The noted stage actress also “reprised” her Log Lady role for the "Psych" Twin Peaks episode Dual Spires, though there she was called “Wood Woman.”
She is survived by her husband Marc Sirinsky and daughter Zoey. Source.

Coulson was David Lynch's assistant director for Eraserhead. In 1968, she married lead Eraserhead actor Jack Nance. But they divorced in 1976. Her second husband, Marc Sirinsky, is a rabbi, at one point resident at Temple Emek-Shalom in Ashland, Oregon.

Jack Nance 

December 21, 1943 - December 30, 1996 

Jack Nance is best known for the starring role of Henry Spence in the David Lynch film Eraserhead. For the part he was reportedly paid $25 a week. He appeared in almost every Lynch film after that, and also as Pete Martell in the television show Twin Peaks.

After Coulson, Nance later married ill-fated actress Nancee Kelly, who was Jerry Van Dyke's daughter. His second wife, Kelly Van Dyke, aka Nancee Kelly, died by suicide by hanging on November 17, 1991. According to his younger brother Richard Nance, Jack, who was in Bass Lake, California, filming Meatballs 4 at the time, attempted to console her on the phone as she threatened suicide. A lightning storm knocked out the phones in Oregon, subsequently taking over 45 minutes for Nance and the director, Bobby Logan, to find a deputy sheriff who contacted Los Angeles police and the apartment manager. They broke into the cabin and found that she had hanged herself.

Nance died in South Pasadena, California on December 30, 1996 under mysterious circumstances. Nance told friends he had been beaten by a young man outside a Winchell's Donuts store in early hours of December 29.
Later that day, he lunched with friends Leo Bulgarini and Catherine Case. Nance had a visible "crescent shaped bruise" under his eye and when asked about it, he related to them the story about the fight. He soon went home, complaining of a headache. The injuries he received caused a subdural hematoma, resulting in his death the following morning. Nance died alone in his apartment. His body was discovered on the bathroom floor by Bulgarini. An autopsy revealed that the actor's blood alcohol level was .24 percent at the time of his death. A subsequent police investigation failed to find evidence of the alleged fight. Source.

Nance actually lived and died on Fair Oaks Avenue in South Pasadena. That is also the site of the old Historic Route 66, which was changed to SR 118, which used to extend past I-210 on Foothill Boulevard through Sunland, Tujunga, La Crescenta and La Cañada, then across the Arroyo Seco into Pasadena, California, where SR 118 ran on Lincoln Avenue and Fair Oaks Avenue, ending at Colorado Blvd (Alternate US 66). The original routing across the Arroyo Seco ran along La Cañada Verdugo Road (now Oak Grove Drive), which crossed the arroyo along the crest of Devil's Gate Dam.

Route 66 and the Devil's name game applies to this history too.

Devil Names and Fortean Locations

I've written about the name game on this Twilight Language blog, often, in relationship to sites.

For example, one of the most in depth treatments was about the "Hockomock Name Game."

I wanted to alert you to my republishing of my classic Fortean Times contribution from 1979, "Devil Names and Fortean Places," over on my new blog, CryptoZooNews, at this selection, "Devil Names, Fortean Places, and Cryptids." Click here to go visit that there.

Enjoy.

Hockomock Name Game

Hockomock Swamp, Massachusetts.

I have written frequently of the bond between places named Devil and Forteana. Europeans coming to America were quite taken with the sinister experiences they had or they would hear about from the Native Americans already here, and these colonists started giving the name Devil to all the locations that were tied to unexplainable phenomena. Almost four decades ago, I wrote my first article about "Devil Names and Fortean Place," and people are still looking into it. A researcher with a remarkable names database living in the Pacific Northwest, Henry Franzoni, told me that as of August 1998, for example, he had found 2,635 places named (or which were formerly named) Devil, Diablo or Diabla in the United States.

Hockomock Point, Lincoln County, Maine.

In a related vein is the Algonquin Indian word for the Devil - Hockomock. I first mentioned this connection to the word "devil" in my book Curious Encounters and in early columns in Fortean Times. Franzoni found a total of 10 places in the US named Hockomock: six in Maine, where I now live; two in Massachusetts; one in New Jersey (Hockamik); and one in Minnesota (Hockamin Creek).

I once traveled to, explored thoroughly, and wrote about one of the most famous Hockomocks in the country - the Hockomock Swamp in the Bridgewater (Massachusetts) Triangle. It is a place where people vanish and creatures like giant snakes, Bigfoot, Thunderbirds, and Mystery Cats are frequently seen. Also, sinister crimes and cultic activity centers on locations within the area too. I have talked to Hockomock-area residents and Native Americans about the meaning of the name "Hockomock" to first discover its link to the word devil. Then I looked in a Depression-era Writers Project Administration (WPA) guide, the one entitled Massachusetts, and found it defined the variant name for the swamp, "Hoccomocco," as "evil spirit".

WPA guides are wonderful books to use to track down the origins of place names.

Most libraries have a specific reference book that is usually helpful in the playing of this game, George R. Stewart's American Place Names (NY: Oxford University Press 1970). The book contains and defines the meanings of 12,000 place names, and is a wonderful resource. But Stewart does not always get it completely correct.

Stewart, for instance, writes that "Hockanum, Hockamock, and Hocquan" are Algonquian for "the general idea of being hook-shaped." I know from my research about Hockomock in Massachusetts and Maine, that is not the whole story. Stewart goes on, however, and relates the words "Hobomak, Hobbomoc, Hobbomocka [as] Algonquian, with reference to an evil spirit (cf. Medicine, Waban) or the idea of a place being haunted; by the colonists taken to be 'the Indian devil,' [the name is found in connection to] several features in New England." (p. 207)

In Maine, of course, the "Indian devil" (or locally, "Injun Devil") was a Bigfoot-like creature in the mountains, seen up until the turn-of-the-19th-20th-century, or a panther-like beast in sighted in some forests.

Stewart is not to be totally trusted. For example, even though he clearly senses a relationship between the "evil spirit" origins of his "Hobomak" and "Waban," he defines "Waban" elsewhere in his book as "Algonquin, a name for the east wind," (p. 516).

For more, I have written about these lexilinks, of course, in 1983's and later editions of Mysterious America and in 1985's and later versions of Curious Encounters.

Also, you may find more on these name games:

Fayette/Lafayette/Fayetteville/Lafayetteville/LaGrange

Manitou

Bell/Beall

Watts/Watkins

Hopkins/Hopkinsville

Hobbs (plus 33 + 23)

Hemingway

Adamski/Burr Oak

Name Game and Synchromysticism

Manitou: Fires of the Great Spirit

Over the weekend, specifically on the Eve of St. John's Day and St. John's Day, June 23-24, 2012, wildfires swept over Colorado, encompassing nature, homes and cabins (shown above). Readers here were probably not too surprised by these events considering the past.

Upon closer inspection, the epicenter reveals yet another name game. The news reports have signaled the fires have been concentrating, at least in one major outbreak, on Manitou Springs, Colorado.

A wildfire burns west of Manitou Springs, Colorado, on Sunday, June 24, 2012. The fire erupted and grew out of control to more than 3 square miles early Sunday, prompting the evacuation of more than 11,000 residents and an unknown number of tourists. (Credit: Christian Murdock, The Colorado Springs Gazette)

Manitou Springs is a "name game" wonder. The settlement was "Manitou" until changed in 1885. "Manitou" is a term for the "Great Spirit," in its most basic interpretation. The main street through the town is a direct route to Pikes Peak. One of the town's major attractions, Briarhurst Manor, is a Victorian manor house built in 1876 by the founder of Manitou Springs, Dr. William Abraham Bell (April 26, 1841–June 6, 1921). Bell earlier had been the 32nd parallel expedition's photographer, as the southern route for the Union Pacific Railroad was being mapped in the late 1860s. (See more on the significance of the "Bell" name here.)

In my breakthrough article, "Devil Names and Fortean Places," published in Summer 1979, in Fortean Times 29, I looked at how names used by Native Americans, First Peoples, and other indigenous folks have left their sinister/spiritual feelings on the land, whether the names used be devil, diablo, hockomock, or manitou.

In my Mysterious America: The Ultimate Guide to the Nation's Weirdest Wonders, Strangest Spots, and Creepiest Creatures, I reprinted and expanded on this "devil names" article in Chapter 3. There I note the following about the name Manitou,

...the WPA guides are wonderful books for tracking down the origins of place names. One of my favorities is the story behind Lake Manitou, Indiana. “Manitou” is an Indian word demonstrating some power and connection to the unknown - “The Great Spirit,” similar in a fashion to what we are talking about here regarding “devil.” According the WPA guide for Indiana (page 436), Lake Manitou was inhabited by three “monster devilfish” that began destroying all the fish there after arriving from Lake Michigan. “They even drove the wild game away, for when the buffalo, elk, deer, and other animals came to the lake to drink, fearsome serpentine tentacles shot out and dragged them beneath the surface of the murky water.” The prayers of the Natives exterminated the monsters and out of gratitude, they named the lake after the Great Spirit. While the exact details of the encounters may be shrouded in folkloric overtones, the underlying nature of such stories are an intriguing bit of evidence for some historical links to real events, as we have seen over and over again. The land reveals its secrets for those who wish to look.

To expand a bit on the meaning of Manitou, the generally accepted definition is "a supernatural force that according to an Algonquian conception pervades the natural world."


But the lines between "god," "spirit," "Great Spirit," "evil spirit," "demon," and "devil" are very thin in how Manitou was used or understood by Western settlers or invaders. The notion of a continuum is at work here, with most North Americans of nonnative background considering Manitou to be a positive "spirit" term and the other end of the range being Hockomock (and its other forms) being a negative "devil" word. For Amerindians, the differences may not be so clear, for example, as any concept can hold both "good" and "evil" meanings. In the Hockomock Swamp, Massachusetts, naturally, there exists both ends of the continuum.


Western Europeans, using an Algonquian name, have now painted the landscape of North America.


Wikipedia points out, "In 1585 when Thomas Harriot recorded the first glossary of an Algonquian language, Roanoke (Pamlico), he included the word mantóac meaning "gods" (with a plural ending). Similar terms were found in nearly all of the Algonquian languages."

Besides Manitou Springs, El Paso County, Colorado, and Lake Manitou, Fulton County, Indiana, other Manitou forms that show up on the landscape of North America include:

Province of Manitoba, Canada

Manitou Island, off Keweenaw Peninsula, Lake Superior, Michigan

North Manitou Island, off Leelanau Peninsula, Lake Michigan, Michigan

South Manitou Island, off Leelanau Peninsula, Michigan

Manitou Island, White Bear Lake, Minnesota

Manitoulin Island, Lake Huron, Ontario

Manitouwadge, Ontario

Big Manitou Falls, Douglas County, Wisconsin

Manitou Island, one of Apostle Islands, Lake Superior, Wisconsin, and

Manitowoc, Manitowoc County, Wisconsin.

Top Twenty Twilight Language Theorists

Top Twenty Twilight Language Theorists


The Living


Who are the top theorists presently doing "twilight language" research? Here is my list. They are given alphabetically by their first names, so as not to show any preference or ranking.

(1) Adam Gorightly, author of 2003's The Prankster and the Conspiracy: The Story of Kerry Thornley and How He Met Oswald and Inspired the Counterculture, and 2008's James Shelby Downard's Mystical War.

(2) Adam Parfrey, publisher at Amok Press & Feral House; editor/author of numerous works, including 1988's The Manson File, 1990's Apocalypse Culture, 1995's Cult Rapture, 2000's Apocalypse Culture II; and coauthor of 2012's Ritual America.


(3) Andrew W. Griffin, creator of Red Dirt Report.


(4) Christopher Knowles, creator of The Secret Sun.


(5) Craig Heimbichner, author of 2005's Blood on the Altar, coauthor of 2012's Ritual America.

(6) Greg Bishop, author of 2000's Wake Up Down There! Excluded Middle Anthology, 2005's Project Beta: The Story of Paul Bennewitz, National Security, and the Creation of a Modern UFO Myth, and other works.


(7) Henrik Palmgren, creator of Red Ice Radio. 

(8) Jim Brandon, author of 1978's Weird America and 1983's The Rebirth of Pan: Hidden Faces of the American Earth Spirit.

(9) Kenn Thomas, publisher of Steamshovel Press; coauthor of 1996's The Octopus: Secret Government and the Death of Danny Casolaro and 1999's Inside the Gemstone File; author of 1996's NASA, Nazis & JFK, 1997's Mind Control, Oswald & JFK, 1999's Maury Island UFO: The Crisman Conspiracy, and many other books.

(10) Loren Coleman, author of 1987's Suicide Clusters and 2004's The Copycat Effect, and the creator of this Twilight Language blog. (To exclude myself seemed beyond modesty.)

(11) Michael Anthony Hoffman II, author of 2001's Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare; and editor of various works by James Shelby Downard.

(12) Robert Schneck, author of 2005's The President's Vampire.

(13) SMiles Lewis, creator of Anomaly Archives and Anomaly Television.

(14) Theo Paijmans, author of 2004's Free Energy Pioneer and 2008's The VRIL Society.


(15) Tim Binnall, creator of Binnall of America.


(16) Todd Campbell, creator of Through the Looking Glass.


The Departed


Some significant theorists have passed away, so with a historical ranking by death date, here they are:


(17) James Shelby Downard (March 13, 1913 – March 16, 1998), author of 2006's The Carnivals of Life and Death, and essays, including “King-Kill/33: Masonic Symbolism in the Assassination of John F. Kennedy” and “Sorcery, Sex, Assassination."

(18) Jim Keith (September 21, 1949 – September 7, 1999), author of 1992's Gemstone File, 1993's Secret and Suppressed, 1994's Black Helicopters over America, 1995's Saucers of the Illuminati, 1996's The Octopus, 1996's Okbomb! Conspiracy and Coverup, and other works.


(19) Robert Anton Wilson (January 18, 1932 – January 11, 2007), coauthor of 1975's The Illuminatus! Trilogy; author of 1973's The Sex Magicians, 1979-1981's Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy, 1977-1995's Cosmic Trigger Trilogy, and other works.

 

(20) John A. Keel (March 25, 1930 – July 3, 2009), author of 1957's Jadoo, 1970's UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse, 1971's Our Haunted Planet, 1975's The Mothman Prophecies, 1975's The Eighth Tower, and other works.

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Special note: Some theorists and researchers shall remain unnamed and invisible from this list due to the low profile they wish to keep.  My sincere thanks to them and all those above who have freely exchanged intellectual ideas and data in this field.